Confronting the Ophelia Syndrome

If I could describe my experience in graduate school with one word it would be "initiative."  At this point in my life, everything is up to to me in my education.  I no longer rely on my professors' treating me like their baby or novice apprentice.  I don't eat out of the palms of anyones' hands either.  Because I've learned to analyze data and the reliability of research, an element of skepticism is a part of my thinking process now more than ever before.

Due dates, margins, font size, number of pages, etc. are finally not a part of my priorities--I can't afford to sweat about them anymore.  I especially have experienced this while transitioning my thesis from what it was (religion and disabilities) to what it is now: an experience in India at the Karuna home.  I realize in accepting and embracing my new thesis and going on this field study that there is no place for the Ophelia syndrome in my life.  I truly feel confronted by it daily, in each assignment I complete, in each article I read, as I check off "nuisance" items on my "To Do List."  I cannot afford to be "chronically ignorant" or submissive at this point.  At this point in my life I will be differentiating myself from others, as Carl Jung said, in a much deeper and useful manner.

One treatment in the article that I still struggle with is Treatment 3: Learn to Live with Uncertainty.  It's okay to surrender the need for absolute truth.  Not everything can be explained, nor does it need to be!  In my research I keep hoping for absolutes--and quick absolutes, at that--but find very little.  Graduate research is all about painting the most accurate picture possible with a bunch of non-absolutes.  It's analyzing and synthesizing information that may not all add up.  My struggle right now is in finding the most truth possible, and creating a readable piece about said truth.

A treatment I'd really like to implement is Treatment 5: Foster Idle Thinking.  I think I do this inadvertently when I abandon schoolwork to leave the house on a run or to talk with a friend.  I describe it as leaving my ineffective work only to return shortly after my run/walk/or diddling around to my "zone."  It seems like when I abandon schoolwork that is being completed at an nonextistent rate to just stare at a wall that I'm able to return with the ability to work at a rapid pace with more quality work.  I suppose I've attacked Ophelia in acquiring this treatment method, althouth I used to think of myself as being lazy.

I'm going to keep attacking Ophelia, even though it makes me tired to be an adult.